Unofficial news and tips about Google

July 2, 2006

Vibe Streamer - Create Your MP3 Server

Vibe Streamer is a fun way to share your music with your friends. Although it's basically a file server, you don't have to spend too much time with configurations.

You can add groups to have different settings and other kind of shared music for each group: your co-workers, your friends, your family. After adding groups, you should create usernames and passwords for each person who will listen to your music. If you create an account that will be used by more than one person, change "Max number of users" in settings. Then add your shared directories, select your IP address and start the server. You can now invite your friends to visit http://your-ip-address:8081, replacing your-ip-address with your IP. They can browser the directories, choose the music they like and play it as a stream.

Vibe Streamer's client is a web page that works with any browser, but the server is only available for Windows. Another limitation is that you can share only MP3 files. As all you do is stream the content of the files, your friends won't get the raw MP3s, so you're not doing anything illegal.

Remember to keep the server functioning in order to let your friends listen to the music.

"If you create an account that will be used by more than one person, change "Max number of users" in settings"

so what if you or the user "accidently" leaked the username and password to the public and they started listening to your stream. Surely thats copyright infringement. Its like downloading a song but you just have to keep accessing the hosts computer.

"It's like playing a song in the background while talking to someone on the mobile phone."

Not really, they can hear it better for one :P lol.

Anyway, good piece of kit if it doesnt break the law. Although im sure you need to ask permission of even pay a lisence to stream copyrighted music material. I can see this thing being used for eRadio's. Even though you say you can make accounts and passwords, they can still get "leaked".

What about this situation. If you did pay and got a permission to stream your MP3 under a password protected account, but somehow your MP3 files are (still) "accidently" leaked to other FTP sites. Who should be published?

What I want to say is that if a person A commits copyright infringement because of a person B, we shouldn't conclude immediately that B commits copyright infringement as well.

If you don't agree with my logic, you may probably agree that a legal action will never be legal as long as we have accidents on the Earth :P

You're not running an internet radio like Shoutcast. I would be grateful if someone explains me in detail why should I pay royalties to stream some music to my friends. I'm not a broadcaster, I don't get any profit, the friend doesn't get the MP3...

Not at all. Your Vibe Streamer server is intended for personal use to make it possible for you to reach your own music collection from wherever you are. Vibe Streamer is not in any way part of a file sharing community or any internet radio broadcasting network. Your files are always kept private by keeping access to your server restricted by a username and a password.

<<In the United States non-commercial transmission of sound-recordings and music-compositions by means of a non-interactive Webcast to only a small circle of family and friends (by tradition of "fair use") would not constitute a "public performance" and thus would not require a license for such public performance.>>

I think this is correct, and not just in the US. And remember he talks about Shoutcast, which is an internet radio.

It seems this is a US only thing.According to the UK streaming rights link supplied by wilsonthongwk, it is illegal for people within the UK to stream or broadcast their commerical music whatever the audience.

"> can i make a audio stream with my> legaly-brought music from my home to listen into my workplace?

No."

That surely disallows:

"Your Vibe Streamer server is intended for personal use to make it possible for you to reach your own music collection from wherever you are."

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"> can i> open it to the world?

No."

That includes friends?

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And to the shoutcast thingy. Surely it the two things have the same principles? Listen to music from a host, and you dont have to buy the sony?

The mp3 are available in your browser's cache, so saying that mp3 files aren't downloaded isn't quite true. You'll have to rename the files to something usable, but there are plenty of free programs that can do that based on the file's ID3 tag information.

As for the US law, it specifically states "non-interactive" website. This is clearly NOT that.

However, I agree that the RIAA, or whoever, have much bigger fish to fry and aren't going to care about streaming some songs to a few friends.

What about restaurants and public places like malls where mp3's/songs are being played in the background while you do shopping. isnt that illegal, is it different from streaming on interent. dont the shop owners play songs which are copyrighted.what about them ? are they supposed to play in public which is good for their business.

you are streaming it for your own personal use and to share with friends, how can that be illegal, if that is illegal then everything is illegal..

It is illegal to play music in public places without paying the record companies a fee. If you play music(including the radio)in your store it is considered public performance. Most of the malls subscribe to a background music service such as Muzak in which case the royalties are included in the service. These people are also the ones that turn in businesses for playing unlicensed music in their stores.

I stream a bunch of tracks on my site but no one ever caught me !Before I use to give free mp3 downloads for those tracks but then I couldn't run ads !If even streaming is illegal then this world sucks !!my site: http://www.muzicera.com

I'm a musician, I make the music that you all want for free. To stream it and not pay for it is theft, like going to a resturant and eating food without paying for it. Music costs money to produce, if people don't pay for their music files then eventually nobody will want to put their music on the net 'cos they'll get ripped off by people like you lot who all think you have a divine right to have the music for free. it takes hours and hours to write a song properly, then costs thousands of dollars to record it well- what gives you the right to not pay a few cents for it at the end?